Ritual (5 page)

Turns out not to be a blow-job that Skinny's after. Turns out he's got other things on his mind.

He takes Mossy to a small car park next to a row of garages and they get into a beat-up old Peugeot where Skinny gives him a hit of gear so good it makes him want to cry.

'Let me put this on?' Skinny asks, after a while, when he can see the H is working on Mossy. He holds up an eye mask, the sort you see them wearing in ads for long-haul airlines. 'I'm going to take you somewhere – take you to meet someone who can help you. But him want you to wear this thing. Him not want you see where him live. What do you want? Do you want to wear it or not?'

Mossy takes it from Skinny and dangles it from his finger, smiling at it. One thing everyone always says about Mossy is that he's not afraid to take a chance. 'Someone's going to "help" me?'

'Yes. What you want? Money? Or more H? Plenty good H, eh?'

Mossy has this picture suddenly, of being driven off to a wasteland and having a bullet in the back of his head. Then he thinks about money, and the suicidal part of him thinks, What the fuck? He snaps the mask round his head and lies back in the seat. 'Go on, then,' he says, still smiling. 'Start the show.'

There's a few moments' silence, and he wonders whether to take the mask off, then the car shifts and the door opens and slams and the other door opens and he realizes Skinny has got out of the front and into the back with him. 'Hey? What're you doing?' But he feels Skinny's hands on his face, he can feel the calloused fingertips like they're made out of hemp rope, and the fingers smoothing the mask down, holding it tight. He doesn't reach up to stop Skinny. He just waits in the silence, and there they sit until he hears footsteps and someone else gets into the car. The chassis shifts and groans and someone's adjusting the front seat, but no one speaks. Then the car engine fires and Mossy licks his lips. The adventure is about to start.

'Bring it on,' he goes, laughing. 'Bring it on.'

It's like being in one of those gangsterland New York movies, the sort Ray Liotta'd be in, and Mossy wonders seriously once or twice if his number's up. Even with the smack his head is keen enough to feel out the little details. The scent of aftershave – that comes from the driver, not the little black guy who sits next to him holding the mask in place, and smells of something different, something bitter, like roots or soil.

They bump along and he can hear other cars, buses, motorbikes passing them in both directions. He can hear the indicator clicking, but still no one speaks. He's lost track of where they're going and when they pull up and pitch him gently out on to cold ground his heart speeds up. This is it? The end?

But it isn't. There's a bit of walking and a voice from somewhere: a bloke, but he can't really hear what he says because it's not a local accent. Then Mossy hears a key in a door and he's led into a building – he can feel the change of temperature. It's warm in here with carpet underfoot and it smells worse than the car. It smells like the old crackhouse that started up last year on the estate, a bastard of a place it was, with people in there half dead – once someone completely dead and in a weird shape, bent over a table with his drawers down and everyone whispered how he was being fucked when his heart suddenly decided to stop, and everyone bet there was some frightened old John somewhere out in the city waiting for the filth to knock on the door. Somewhere a TV's playing. Mossy's guided round furniture, and then there's a long corridor, and Skinny's still guiding him, with the driver walking in front. There's the sound of a door being opened, a curtain being pulled back and keys, heavy and metal like a gaoler's keys, and a rusty squeak of a gate opening. But this time Mossy balks.

He pulls back, suddenly unsure. 'Nah. Don't like this.'

'It's OK, son,' goes a voice he hasn't heard before. The driver? 'D'you want us to take you back?'

Already Mossy can feel that the hit's got to its best. There's that faint sinking of something in the back of his neck that's telling him the turning-point isn't far. That in a few hours he'll be back in the agonies, wanting to die.

'You've got something for me? There'd better be something for me.'

'Come through,' goes the voice. 'You can see it. As soon as you step through.'

There's a bitter taste in his mouth, but he steps through anyway. He has to lift his feet because the opening is smaller than a normal door and he wonders what the fuck sort of a place he's in. Behind him he hears the door being locked and again he pulls a little, but he can feel Skinny's small scratchy hands on his arms, leading him, pushing him forward. The air's better in here, just a faint smell of burning and damp, but better than it was in the other place.

'Here,' goes Skinny. 'We's here.' And he pushes him down on to a seat.

Mossy gropes for the mask and drags it off. He blinks. They're on their own, no driver, in a room with no daylight coming in – the only light is a lopsided standard lamp next to the sofa – and a three-bar electric fire plugged into an extension lead that trails off into the darkness. There's old wallpaper on the walls, but it's been scribbled on like this is where kids have been living and someone's pinned up teenagers' magazine posters of Russell Crowe in
Gladiator
, Brad Pitt in
Troy
– another one of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones wearing shades, the words
Protecting the World
From the Scum of the Universe
blazing above them. Mossy shuffles his feet. The carpet is worn out, a sort of sickly purple colour, you can see the foam backing in places, and in the corner a ghetto-blaster, a kettle, a box of tea-bags and a packet of sugar.

'Where's this place to, then?' He turns to look over his shoulder. There's a little corridor with a window behind them, but the glass is broken and it's covered with a grille, 'SITEX' stamped on it like the stuff the council used to cover up the ones in the crackhouse after the dead body on the table. It feels like someone's started to convert this place into something then got bored, because bare wires are poking out of the plaster in places and holes are bashed in walls and Mossy knows that the only way out is through the gate they just came through. 'This where you live then, is it?'

'Yes'm,' goes Skinny. He's standing at a wooden unit that's been torn out of a nameless kitchen and stranded here in this fuck-awful place. 'I live here. This be my home.' He gets something out of the drawer and brings it to Mossy, whose heart jumps. He knows what's in it even before Skinny opens it. He can feel his legs and stomach go a bit fluid.

'Well?' he says. 'What've I got to do for it?'

Skinny doesn't answer. He rubs his brown finger over his top lip and doesn't meet Mossy's eyes. Mossy makes a grab for the bag, just misses. Skinny steps out of reach and stands a few feet away. Something in his eyes has closed off and gone all evasive.

Mossy sits back in the sofa, breathing hard. 'Come on – spit it out. What do you want? No weird shit, OK, no "red" or anything. But fists is OK and you don't need to wear nothing.' He rubs his crotch a little, gives Skinny a sly look. 'And there's lots of me if it's you wants the fucking. I'd fill you up, little thing like you.'

Skinny sits down on the sofa next to Mossy and gives him such a sad look that Mossy has another flash that they're about to kill him.

'What?' he goes, trying to make it sound light. 'What's that look for?'

'Blood,' says Skinny. 'Just a little blood. A little blood and you get plenty H. Plenty money too.'

'
Blood?
I just told you, I don't do no weird shit. No "red". You ain't going to knock me around, sweetheart, not for all the gear in the world.'

'A needle.' Skinny taps the inside of Mossy's arm, just where the H went in. 'I is put little needle in here, and take a little of yours blood.'

There's a long silence. Mossy stares at his arm, then looks up into Skinny's liquidy eyes. They meet his, and Mossy can see blood in the whites, like he's ill. But he's not being threatening and, anyway, there isn't enough of him to put up much of a fight – though he's wiry and doesn't look like he's a user so he'd have the edge if anything did kick off.

'You a vampire, then?' He laughs hoarsely, a little nervous. But Skinny keeps on looking into his eyes, all serious. So Mossy stops. He swallows. This is so fucking freaky. He uncurls Skinny's fingers from his arm.

'What're you going to do with my blood, then?' he asks tightly, because something about this is making him feel sick. 'What're you going to do with it? Drink it?'

Caffery came quicker than he'd meant to. Maybe it was the stress of the day, maybe the long hours, or maybe something else, but almost as soon as he was inside Keelie, her legs hooked up over his shoulders, it was over. She was lying on the back seat of the car with her skirt hitched up, holding the back of his head in both hands and pulling his face down so it was pressed against hers, and maybe she didn't want it to have been that quick because it took him a minute or two to get her to loosen her grip on him, untangling her fingers from his hair and moving her shoulders back. He knelt up in the well of the car, moved her legs and fell sideways on to the seat, one hand loosening the collar of his shirt, the other resting on his chest.

She didn't say anything so neither did he, just stared blankly out of the window, feeling his heart thudding under his ribcage, his pulse making him vaguely aware of a conversation he'd had three months ago. It was the day he'd left London, and when one of his colleagues had asked him, 'What the hell do you think you're going to do out there in the middle of nowhere with the woollies?' he'd answered, with no trace of a smile, 'Don't know. Probably fuck myself to death.'

A joke, of course, but now the words came back to him because he didn't know how else to explain what he was doing, seeing girls like Keelie week after week. He hadn't wanted to tell the truth: that he'd left London, the city he'd lived in most of his life, because one day he'd woken up to find he'd lost the only connection he had to the place – the disappearance, thirty years ago, of his only brother Ewan, age just nine. The question of what had happened to Ewan had been the only question in Caffery's life. Ever since he remembered, it had coloured everything he did, and for a long time he was sure the answers were in London, across the railway cutting at the back of the family garden, in the house of the ageing paedophile, Penderecki. Caffery obsessed about that house, the place he was sure Ewan had died, for years. Then suddenly, overnight, it had gone. Vanished into nothing. Yes, he still dreamed and thought about his brother. Yes, he still had the drive to find his body, but it wasn't London he felt connected to any more. He'd stopped wanting to stare out of his window at Penderecki's house, and he couldn't remember why he'd once thought he'd get an answer out of the damned place.

But he still wanted his job. He'd gone into the Metropolitan Police force because every case he solved felt a little bit more like balancing out what had happened to Ewan. And although he wasn't a ladder-climber – he'd got a jumpstart on the HPD scheme in the Met but at thirty-seven he didn't want to think about Chief Inspector exams – every conviction helped nail down the thing in his chest that kept him awake at night. His connection to London might be weakening, but the link to the firm stayed hard. He could do the job anywhere – even here, in Bristol. And, anyway, there was someone out here in the west that he hoped would help him untangle the Ewan equation a little further.

Next to him Keelie coughed and put her fingers to her throat, rubbing it a little as if it was sore. Then she put her index fingers into the corners of her eyes and wiped them, clearing out the caked make up. She pulled her skirt down from where it was rucked up round her waist and leaned over the front seat, clicking the passenger side sunvisor down to check her face in the mirror. The skirt was tight across her backside so the dents of her knickers and suspenders were visible.

Suddenly out of nowhere Caffery felt his throat get tighter, his eyes sting. He sat up a bit, putting his hand out, resting it on her calf, wanting to speak to her suddenly, ask her if she had kids, ask her just to say one human thing to him. But Keelie took the touch the wrong way. She raised her eyebrows at her reflection in the mirror and gave a small smile. 'What's that for?' she said, and was about to say something else when the car dipped violently. There was a
boom
of metal, and out of the corner of Caffery's eye something dark seemed to cross in front of the windscreen.

'Fuck!'
Keelie grabbed the back of the seat, hanging on as the vehicle bounced.
'What was
that?'

Caffery fumbled his zip closed, shouldered the door open and leaped out into the deserted alley. 'Hey!' he shouted into the darkness. He looked behind him, his back to the car, scanning the shadows. 'What the
fuck
was all that about?'

Hey
, the echo came back,
fuck was all that
. . .

Silence. The only sound was traffic and the distant ring of women laughing on City Road. The alley was empty – just a carrier-bag spilling out rubbish on to the pavement and the reflection of a few neon lights on the stone kerb. He walked the length of it, up to the road, inspecting every doorway, every dip in the contour of the old brick walls. He turned back to the car. Keelie had switched on the interior light and was staring out at him, white-faced and scared. He knew what she was thinking – that it had been like someone flying past them, bouncing once on the bonnet and disappearing into thin air. Or – because the idea of someone flying was crazy – it was as if someone had been sitting on the bonnet the whole time, and when the sex was over had jumped off and run away, hiding somewhere neither of them could see.

Caffery had a thought. Carefully, moving quietly, he fastened his belt.
Don't go to war with your
trousers undone
. He rolled up his sleeves, got down on the cold pavement and tipped on to his side, lying close enough to the wheels of the car that he could see under there, but not so close that if something rushed out at him he wouldn't have somewhere to go. He lowered his face on to the kerb, levering it forward so he could see under the car. There was nothing – just the smell of petrol and the faint burr of orange streetlight reflected on the road. He used his heel to push himself further under the car so he could see behind the wheels but, again, there was nothing. He rolled back and turned his face up to the sky, the clouds lit orange by the city, the stars beyond. He studied the tops of the buildings and thought hard about the feeling he had that they were being watched. Even now.

After a while he got to his feet and brushed himself down, thinking about suspension systems and whether they could get latched down. Maybe a car could stay caught that way for a while, waiting for a movement inside to release it like a coiled spring, then unexpectedly bounce itself free.

Keelie was still staring at him and he raised a hand to her. The need to have her again had gone, but he knew he'd have to speak to her, and the thought made him feel tired. There'd been more to the move to Bristol than just wanting to get away from London. There'd been a giving up, an acceptance that he'd never meet the human being who'd understand how guilt and loss can take a person and squeeze the life out of them. A long time ago he'd stopped looking at women and thinking one of them might bring it back for him.

Yes, he thought now, feeling in his pocket for a smoke and checking the walls for anything he'd missed, he'd got over that one long ago. And life was all the better for it.